History of Lee County, together with biographical matter, statistics, etc., Part 27

Author: Hill, H.H. (Chicago) pbl
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, H.H. Hill
Number of Pages: 910

USA > Illinois > Lee County > History of Lee County, together with biographical matter, statistics, etc. > Part 27

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C. M. MILLER, butter and cheese maker, Sublette, was born in the Rhine province, Prussia, November 28, 1854. He was the eldest child of K. and Anne (Michels) Miller, who with their family came to Win- field, Du Puge county, Illinois, in 1864. The subject of this notice received a common education in the English and German schools. Mr. Miller has been thoroughly schooled in the cheese and butter business, having been employed by several of the best manufacturers in the famous Fox river region. In 1873 he began in La Fox, Kane county, under Potter & Baker, and afterward in the same vicinity for H. L. Ford. He was subsequently employed by Martin Switzer at St. Charles, same county, making the first cheese in his factory there, and

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also in Batavia by H. A. Bogardus, wholesale dealer in butter and cheese, Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Miller began to manufacture for himself in Cook county, Palatine Grove, thence to Sublette in the spring of of 1881, buying the factory built by George Pulling. This establish- ment when completed will have cost about $3,500. A boiler and engine have been put in and a milk pool is contemplated. Mr. Miller is making both butter and cheese, shipping chiefly to Chicago. He is governed in his sales by Elgin prices, and his business is steadily increasing and promises soon to be a leading industry.

OLIVER A. WOOD, farmer, Sublette, was born in Bolton, Massachu- setts, June 1833, son of Amariah and Rachel (Atherton) Wood, born May, 1807, and February, 1811, respectively. Both of his parents are of English descent, his mother having descended from one of four brothers named Atherton who came to Massachusetts at an early period. Oliver Wood is the oldest and the only survivor in a family of four sons and three daughters. The latter all died young in the east ; one son died an infant. The rest of the family, Oliver, George and Frank, received a good education for the times. In 1851 the family came to Sublette and settled on Sec. 30, where Oliver and his family are living with his parents. George was killed at Chickasaw Bayou, near Vicksburg, December 1863. Frank died in the hospital at Nashville, January 1864. Oliver Wood enlisted in the 75th Ill., Co. E, in August 1862. He was seriously wounded in the battle of Perryville, and was mustered out January 8, 1863, having been confined in hospital from October, 1862, till January, 1863, at Perryville and Louisville, Kentucky, and New Albany, Indiana. His wound was a serious one, the ball passing entirely through his abdomen, and from its effects he has suffered more or less ever since. Mr. Wood married, Angust 1863, Climena Hubbard, daughter of Royal Prescott Hubbard. Their sons, George Frank, born October 1865, and Leon A., October 1869, con- stitute their family, having lost their two daughters in infancy. Mr. Wood is a Mason and an Odd-Fellow, and with his family belongs to the Congregational church. He owns the homestead of 120 acres.

JOHN C. SPIELMANN, farmer, Mendota, was born in Hesse Darm- stadt, Germany, March 9, 1830. His parents are John and Mary (Sinner) Spielmann, and he is the only survivor of their four children. In 1847 he came via New York directly to Lee county with his father and mother, who are now living with him. They settled on Sec. 34, buying a elaim of 30 acres from a Mr. Kenney. They now own a valuable farm in Secs. 34 and 35, and in Bureau county opposite. In 1871 they built a fine residence on Sec. 35, on the Chicago road. In 1858 Mr. Spielmann married Julia Naumann ; they have no children, but they have reared two adopted ones: Julia Kinnenberger, who was

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. married in 1879, to Julius Alber, now living in Iowa; and George Higgins, aged fifteen years. John Spielmann, jr., is a self-made man, having received the most of his education in the German tongue. From 1854 until 1869 he was a circuit preacher in the church of the E.A.U.A., but quit these duties on account of bodily infirmities. He has preached in Cook, La Salle, Tazewell, Peoria, Kankakee and other counties in this vicinity. He is a man of unimpeachable character, and is better known in Bureau than in Lee county.

JACOB RICHERT, farmer, Mendota, was born in Alsace, Germany, November 1835; son of John and Anna C. (Staub) Richert, and is the fifth in a family of four boys and three girls. In 1854 he came to New Orleans with Peter Richert, his eldest brother, thence to Lee county in the fall of 1854, stopping in Indiana during the summer. Jacob worked around for several years, and in the spring of 1861 bought 80 acres in Sec. 36 from John Fry, jr., at $21 per acre. In the same year he enlisted in Co. B, 52d Ill. Inf. This regiment was mustered at Geneva, Illinois, and departed late in the fall of 1861 for St. Louis, thence to St. Joseph, where they staid about two months. From here they were sent to Tennessee, by the way of Quincy and Cairo, Illinois, crossing the Mississippi at Quincy on the ice. The regiment came up at Fort Donelson just as the rebels surrendered, and were under Grant at Shiloh, losing there 260 of their number in killed and wounded. Previously Mr. Richert had been detailed as a gnard with prisoners to Springfield, Illinois. He was in the battle of Corinth, where his regiment staid till they were sent to Pulaski, Ten- nessee, in the early winter of 1863. From here Mr. Richert was sent home to recruit, remaining home five months and returning with as many recruits. He reentered the 52d in the Atlanta campaign in June 1864, and was engaged in twenty days, hard fighting and skir- mishing. He was mustered out at Rome, Georgia, October 1864, not having received a scratch during his faithful service. In December, 1864, he married Mary Butz, of May township, and seven children now gladden their home: Frederick, born December 1865; Mary, born February 1868; George B., born April 1870; Sarah, born Aug- ust 1873; Clara, born September 1875; Emma, born January 1878 ; Simon, born September 1880. Mr. Richert now owns the S.E. ¿ Sec. 36, having bought the west half of the same from Michael Bitner at $45 per acre. There are good buildings on the place, and its owner is now enabled to enjoy the fruit of his toil. He and his family are mem- bers of the Evangelical church. Mr. Richert is a republican. His father has been to Illinois three times, once remaining four years, and returned to his native land for the last time in 1876, and died in

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

Baden while on the way. For many years he had lived among his children, and had a strong attachment for the sea.

CHRISTIAN BIESTER, farmer, Sublette, was born in Germany, Han- over county, December 1831. His parents, Fred and Caroline (Weber) Biester, had a family of three boys and one girl. His father was seven years in the German army. Our subject came to America in 1855, via Baltimore to Chicago, where he stopped two years; thence to Lee county, Illinois. Here he worked out for several years as a farm- hand. In 1867 he bought eighty acres in Sec. 8. He has been in- dustrious and careful, and now has the deeds for 236 acres of valuable land, upon which he erected a fine dwelling in 1873. He went back to Germany in the fall of 1861, and was there married, March 1862, to Dora Miller, whom he had known in childhood. They arrived in Chicago in March 1862. Their family are : Louis, born January 1863; Henry, November 1865; Ernest, November 1867; Dora, December 1869; Mary, June 1871; Anna, May 1873; August, December 1874. The family belonged to the Lutheran church. Mr. Biester is the only one of his family that came to America. Mrs. Biester's mother came to America in 1868. The latter has a son in Dakota, a daughter in Min- nesota, and three daughters, all married, living in Lee county.

JOHN H. SCHWOUB, farmer, Sublette, was born in Hesse Darmstadt, Germany, May 1, 1813. He was six years in the German army. In 1847 he came to America with his family of a wife and five children. He settled on Sec. 34 in the town of Sublette, and now owns a farm of 170 acres there. He first bought thirty acres on which was a log house, on the north side of the "Chicago road," on land now owned by Conrad Speilman. When twenty-five years of age he married Margaret Kühl. Their children are: George, Conrad (enlisted in Co. B, 52d Ill. Vols., and was killed at Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia) ; Philip, Mary, Henry, Katherine, Eva and Margaret. George, Henry, Mary (Mrs. Reichart) and Margaret (Mrs. Boeler) are living in Clay county, Kansas, and Katherine (Mrs. Thomas Boettcher) in Mendota. Eva (Mrs. Baoer) is now living with her husband on the homestead. Schwonb belongs to the Evangelical church, and his life shows that he is a true disciple of Christ. In politics he was an old-time democrat ; but voted for Fremont and Lincoln, and has since been a republican.

FREDERICK OBERHELMAN, grain-buyer, Sublette, was born in War- ren county, Missouri, in 1844. His father, Frederick, and his mother, Christine (Knoepker), came to Missouri, the former in 1833, the latter in 1838. Frederick was the eldest in a family of eleven children. His father was a farmer and he was reared to the same business. His grandfather was a German soldier, and was in the battles of Leipsic, Waterloo, and others. Mr. Oberhelman was sent to school but little,

Ever Jones Riley Paddock

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTAR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS R L

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in all not more than twelve months, and never to an English school. During the war of the rebellion he was five years in the Missouri State Militia and Home Guards. In 1866 he married Mary E. Betz, daughter of John Betz, an early settler in Sublette. None of their children have lived; they have one adopted daughter. Mr. Oberhel- man began farming in 1867 on Sec. 22, and continued in the same till 1871, when he went into the business of buying and shipping grain in the village of Sublette. In 1874 he built an elevator, which with his engine cost him $5,000. He also deals in coal and lumber, and till re- cently dealt in live-stock. His business is prosperous, he having paid out as much as $100,000 in one year. He and his wife belong to the Evangelical Lutheran church. In politics he is non-partisan.

ELIJAH AUSTIN, farmer, Sublette, was born in upper Canada, January 1820. His father, Norman Austin, and his mother, Sarah Landers, were natives of Connecticut. His ancestors were "Revolu- tioners," and his father served in the war of 1812. In the fall of 1837 Elijah Austin went to Sandusky, Ohio, thence with wagon to the present site of Galesburg, Illinois, passing through Aurora and Mon- mouth, then only the germs of towns ; lived in Knox county till 1840, when he went back east. Returning to Knox county, he lived there till 1846, thence to Princeton. In 1849 he made a claim on Secs. 17 and 18, of 152 acres. In 1859 he bought from Henry Hannon 80 acres formerly owned by Daniel Baird, who lived on the old La Salle and Grand De Tour road, where Mr. Austin now resides. The latter owns a large farm in Secs. 17, 18, 19, and a few acres in Sec. 20, besides a hundred acres in Sec. 30. In 1843 Mr. Austin married Sarah Burton, of Hancock county, Illinois. They have a family of seven children living. Abagail, born December 1843 (wife of Nelson Van Fleet, Kansas, son of an old settler in Aurora); Mary, born 1845 (Mrs. Joseph Doane, died in 1868); Burton, February 1848 (married October 1876, has two children and is farming in Sublette); Elizabeth, May 1850; Melissa, September 1852; Jane, March 1855; Frances A., September 1866; Minnie R., April 1871. The last two are by his second wife, Catherine Austin, to whom he was married September 1863. Elizabeth (Mrs. Blair) is living in Brooklyn township. In politics Mr. Austin is an ex-republican greenbacker, formerly a free- soiler. He is a Mason, a genial neighbor and a kind father.

SILAS D. RENIFF, farmer, Sublette, born 1816, in Tioga county, New York, is the son of Ephraim and Betsey (Wesson) Reniff, both born in Massachusetts. His grandfather on the father's side was a Scotchman. Ephraim Reniff was a farmer and had a family of eight children. In 1843 he came west, and settled on section 19, where Seth Baird lives. The following year Silas Reniff came out and claimed a half-section of 17

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

land, one half of which he afterward entered. This was a 160 in Sec. 20, where he now lives. He owns 240 acres of well improved land, upon which there are good buildings. In 1849 Mr. Reniff was married to Laura Angier, only sister of Thomas Angier. Their issue is a son, Ernest, born September 1855; he married Mary Chamberlain, May 1876, by whom he has two boys, Ernest and Laurie, born No- vember, 1877, and June, 1880, respectively. Mr. Reniff has been a very energetic business man, and is now active for one of his age. For many years he has been a general stock dealer and he is now shipping to Chicago. For twenty-seven years he has assessed the town of Sublette, and has been twenty years school trustee. Before coming west he was eight years a teamster to Boston, driving an eight-horse team about a hundred miles to and from that city. Then and for many years after he was an athletic and daring man, and one with whom it was not safe to trifle. He is a staunch republican and a perfectly reliable man. His father died about 1855 and his mother a few years later.

THOMAS S. ANGIER, farmer and magistrate, Sublette, was born 1822, in Fitzwilliam, Cheshire county, New Hampshire; he is the son of Abel and Laura (Holmes) Angier, born 1797 and 1801 respectively. His grandparents were born in New England, and his great-grand- father Amidon was in the revolution. His mother died when he was eight years old, and his father seven years later. Thomas, the only son in a family of two children, received a common school education ; was married in 1838, to Fannie, daughter of Benjamin B. and Grata (Whitney) Morse, who was born in New Hampshire in 1821. Her ancestors, Whitney and Morse were " Revolutioners," and the latter was in the war of 1812. Mr. Angier, with his wife and one child, came west to La Moille, Bureau county, Illinois, in 1840; thence to Sublette, Lee county, the following spring, settling on the N.E. } of Sec. 31, having bought it the year before. Of a family of ten children only three survive. In the summer of 1861 his eldest sons, Abel, born in 1838, and Leander in 1841, enlisted in Co. D, 46th Ill. Vols. In the winter of 1861-2, before their regiment went south, both were

taken sick with diphtheria. Though two others of the family died at this time, they recovered, and were with Co. D till the fall of 1862, when both were in the hospital at Memphis; there Leander died in September. Abel did not again enter the service, and died of con- sumption in 1873. Ambrose, third in the family, is married and living on the homestead. In 1874 Mr. Angier moved to the village of Sub- lette, where he has since lived. He is a man in whom the people have entire confidence, having held some office ever since the organization of the township. In 1851 he was elected justice of the peace, in

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which capacity he has acted ever since. He has been eighteen years supervisor of Sublette township, and much of that time was chairman of the board of supervisors. Besides these he has held other offices ; he is consequently well acquainted with the development of this town- ship, and to him the writer is indebted for much valuable information. Mr. Angier is a republican and a Mason, and may be very appropri- ately styled " the oracle of Sublette."

PHILIP FAUBLE, farmer, Sublette, was born in Lee county in April 1851. His father, John Fauble, was an early settler in Sublette and acquired a large property. His mother is one of the largest tax-payers in the county. In October, 1877, Philip Fauble married Barbara Pope, of Bureau county. Their family : George L., born June 1879, and Katie, December 1880. He has a farm of 200 acres in Sec. 32. This is known as the William Tourtillott farm. In 1880 Mr. Fauble built a fine barn at a cost of about $1,400. He has a good house and a large orchard. His wife owns a quarter-section in Brooklyn town- ship. They are members of the Evangelical church. Our subject received a common school education ; he is a strong republican and a man of pleasing address.

AMBOY TOWNSHIP.

SETTLEMENT.

A Frenchman named Filamalee is said to have been the first white settler in Palestine Grove and in the present limits of Amboy town- ship. Some of the earlier settlers remember his shanty about a mile south of Rocky Ford, and have not forgotten the mortar made in a burr-oak stump in which he pounded his corn for bread, and which re- mained for a long time as a relic to mark the first pioneer settlement. He belonged to that unsettled class who were never content to live in any region except where savage dominion was weakening to dissolu- tion, and civilized footsteps chased hard upon the departing race. He could not bear the sight of regular occupation and improvement, and as soon as the tide of immigration set in he moved farther away into the mediate solitude between the red and the white man. In his eulogy upon Daniel Boone the poet Byron spoke not less truly of all his congeners when he said,

PHI witte. hat Fauble township die uthwest of Sud ht. He had bee: th. The funer - ftannon at

"'Tis true, he shrank from men even of his nation, When they built up unto his darling trees; He mov'd some hundred miles off, for a station, Where there were fewer houses and more ease. The inconvenience of civilization Is, that you neither can be pleased, nor please.

But where he met the individual man,

He showed himself as kind as mortal can."

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

The first permanent settler was John Dexter, who emigrated from Canada in the spring of 1835, and made a claim on the north side of Palestine Grove, and on the N.W. ¿ Sec. 13. Here he built a cabin about twelve feet square, and then went on as fast as he could to add other improvements to his home; in the meantime looking anxiously but waiting patiently for others to come into the neighborhood. It must not be thought that he was a solitary inhabitant ; on the contrary, he had near neighbors east of him at Inlet Grove. But the spring of 1836 brought the second settler, and Dexter, it may be supposed, began to feel that this could not much longer be regarded as the frontier. The new arrival was James Doan and his young wife, now Mrs. O. J. Fish, of China township. He made his claim south of the Inlet, on the place now better known as the Joseph Lewis farm, from having been owned by the latter from 1845 till a recent date. He was from Berrien county, Michigan, but had been raised in Indiana. His father, John Doan, was a North Carolinian. The latter and his daughter Jemima came with his son, the trip being made by the family in a Pennsylvania wagon drawn by three yoke of oxen. James Doan had visited this place in October 1835, and selected his own as well as a claim for his father and another for his brother Joseph. After a patch of sod corn had been planted John Doan and his daughter returned to Michigan, and in the following autumn the whole family came to their new home. Until their arrival the days passed wearily, and the season was one crowded with painful discon- tent to Mrs. Doan, and for long weeks at a time she saw no other white person than her own husband. The Indian-trail from Council Bluffs to Chicago lay only a little way off to the south of their cabin, and the camping ground of these roving bands was on the Blunt farm. Large bodies of them often stopped there; and the Shabbona Indians came nearly as often into the neighborhood to hunt.

ANDREW BAINTER, brother-in-law to James Doan, arrived in the spring of 1837, and took the claim where Seneca Strickland lives, on the Sublette road. His second house, a frame dwelling, was the one which has been improved and is now occupied by Benjamin Tread- well. The next and most important addition to the infant community was Asa B. Searles, who arrived in October 1837, with a horse-team, from New York, and was accompanied from Peoria by Benjamin Wasson, another New Yorker, who had been here the year before and taken a claim on Secs. 14 and 15. Mr. Searles located the S. ¿ Sec. 14, on which, several years later, he laid out the village of Binghamton. Nathan Meek was living in the vicinity of Rocky Ford as early as 1837. His name will recall to the old settlers many suspicious cir- cumstances and an unsavory reputation, all suggesting the operations

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of the banditti. His "corn-cracker," situated three miles down the stream, was the first mill for grinding in Lee county. He sometimes attempted to make flour, but it was always of execrable quality.

On Mr. Searle's first arrival he found a saw-mill in operation at Rocky Ford, owned by Timothy Perkins and Horace Bowen, and when he finally came with his family, on Christmas eve in the same year, it had become the property of a man named Lee. He kept it awhile and sold out to Mason; the latter died, and it passed into the hands of John Van Norman, from whom it was purchased in 1848 by F. R. Dutcher. A log-dam spanned the stream, and the mill was run by a "flutter " wheel. One Mitchell was millwright.

James Blair and his sons William, Winthrop, and Edwin were pioneers of 1837. The latter has the old homestead on Sec. 29. The same year John S. Sawyer and four sons erected a cabin sonth of the Illinois Central shops. Sawyer sold a part of his claim to Joseph Farwell in 1841, and the rest to Joseph Appleton.

Alexander Janes also became a resident, but the next year sold his claim to Chester S. Badger and moved to Bureau county, where he acquired wealth and an honorable reputation. Mr. Badger was from Broome county, New York, and came to Illinois and worked at mill- wrighting during the season of 1837, and returned home in the fall ; the following year he and his son Simon settled in this township, and in 1839 Warren, another son, arrived, bringing the mother and her two daughters Sarah and Roena. In the autumn Warren returned to his native home, remaining there until 1842, when he came west again and resided in Amboy township until his death in 1861. Chester Badger, a younger son, drove through from New York alone with a two-horse team in 1840, and has been a resident here since. The Badgers located their homesteads about a mile and a half east of Amboy. Henry Badger came in 1849, and has always lived in Bing- hamton. The senior Badger brought hardwood lumber from Frank- lin Grove and built the first frame house in the settlement. A party consisting of John C. Church, Curtis Bridgman and his sons Curtis and Urial, and Wm. Hunt, the three last unmarried men, arrived in midsummer of 1838. The senior Bridgman returned to Stenben county, New York, in the following autumn and brought the remainder of the family. Mr. Church selected a claim one mile south of Amboy, but in 1841 sold to Jacob Doan, who immigrated from Ohio that year, and secured another where he is now living, adjoining the northern limits of the city. Wm. Church settled here a little later the same season that his brother did ; he lived in this vicinity until twenty years ago, when he removed to Iowa. The year 1838 must be credited with another valuable citizen in the person of Martin Wright, from the

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

Bay State, who lived in the remote northeast corner of the township. He was a large-hearted, liberal-minded, just man, and enjoyed in the highest degree the esteem and confidence of his fellow citizens. He served them as assessor, and many years as road commissioner, and died about a year ago. His widow survives. Harvey Axtell settled in the southwest corner of the township; Frederick Baldwin on Sec. 10, where James Luce lives; and Ransom Barnes opened the Isaac Gage farm. The two latter were from the Empire State, and the three belong to 1838.

Frederick Bainter came into the Doan neighborhood in the same season. John Fosdick settled at Lee Center a year earlier, and worked at his trade of blacksmithing, assisted by James Doan, another crafts- man, until the next spring, when the shop was moved to Doan's. This was the first smithy in Amboy township. After a residence here of three years, Fosdick went back to Lee Center. Doan and Frederick Bainter afterward carried on blacksmithing sometime together; the former invented and the two manufactured the first scouring plow ever used in these parts, but for some reason Doan's efforts failed to secure a patent. He visited Washington for that purpose as early as 1841 or 1842 ; six or seven years later he sold his interest to his partner, and in 1849 went to California, where in 1853 he was murdered. To the pioneers the mention of this scouring plow will bring back the recol- lection of the hardships and inferiority of farming in those days, when the wooden moldboard plow and the wooden tooth harrow were the standard implements for preparing the ground for seed. The harvest was gathered with the hand sickle, a diminutive instrument which very few of to-day could recognize, and the cradle, a great improvement on the back-breaking sickle, which is now hardly more to be seen. Then the grain was spread upon the ground in a circle and tramped out with horses or oxen ; the winnowing was done in the wind, which, thanks to the open prairie, was seldom too low to be available at any moment ; and next followed the really romantic part of the season's work -hauling to Chicago, a hundred miles, the grain which brought but thirty or forty cents per bushel. Pork commanded from $1.25 to $2 per hundred. It will not escape attention that the virgin soil when once subdued, a task to accomplish which was no light labor with the tools then in use, produced good crops with little care. It has been said that to " tickle it with a plow it would laugh with a crop," and "Chet " Badger affirms that " tiekling" was about all it received. It must have been so if he could plow five acres a day with an ox team. In less reverent sections of the country such treatment of the soil would be called " deviling."

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History of Lee County, together with biographical matter, statistics, etc., Part 27

Author: Hill, H.H. (Chicago) pbl Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago, H.H. Hill Number of Pages: 910

Author: Hill, H.H. (Chicago) pbl
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, H.H. Hill
Number of Pages: 910